Orphan Black sci-fi series stars Canadian It girl

PASADENA, Calif. — Tatiana Maslany had to report back to work in Toronto first thing this week, alongside her Orphan Black Canadian castmates Jordan Gavaris and Dylan Bruce.

On this crisp, sunny January morning in Southern California, though, she was determined to just to enjoy the moment and bask in the glow — however brief or long that glow might turn out to be — of being the latest lead actor in a BBC Worldwide drama.

Orphan Black, co-created by Endgame and Flashpoint consulting producer Graeme Manson, is a twisty, mind-bending sci-fi thriller about a desperate, down-and-out woman in her early 20s who one day spots a woman who looks exactly like her on a subway platform — seconds before that woman throws herself to her death in front of an oncoming train.

Sarah assumes the other woman’s identity, cleaning out her bank account and rebooting her life in a new image. She’s led a hard life. This, she thinks, is the break she’s been looking for, and she’s determined seize the moment.

There’s just one catch. It turns out that there are any number of other women out there who look exactly like her — clones — each living a separate life and not knowing the other exists.

Maslany allowed herself a rueful laugh when asked if keeping the different characters straight in her head — she plays all the versions of herself, however many there may be — is tricky, especially given the nature of TV and film production, where scenes are filmed out of order with different episodes on different days.

“Yeah, it’s a challenge, the different arcs,” she said. “There are so many arcs to it. It’s a bit of a mind— … I keep wanting to say the wrong word.”

Explosion.

“Yes, explosion, exactly,” she said.

She knew the rules, though, going in.

Maslany, born and raised in Regina — she graduated in 2003 from Regina’s Dr. Martin LeBoldus Catholic High School — had landed several breakout roles already: in Grown Up Movie Star opposite Shawn Doyle, winning the Sundance Film Festival’s breakout star award in 2010, and more recently appearing opposite Saoirse Ronan and Alexis Bledel in the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival debut Violet & Daisy. She has appeared in indie films opposite Rachel McAdams, Victor Garber and Ray Liotta. Orphan Black is her first starring role in a homegrown TV drama — a homegrown TV drama that has just been snapped up by BBC Worldwide.

Orphan Black, originally commissioned for Bell Media and CTV’s Space specialty channel, was BBC America’s marquee drama this past weekend at the semi-annual meeting of the Television Critics Association. It will debut this spring on Space, on the same day and time it makes its BBCA debut.

From the start, Maslany knew the role would be both physically and emotionally demanding.

“I had to be on my A game, physically, from the beginning,” she said. “I knew I needed the endurance to go through the entire series, however long it lasts.”

The physical and emotional challenges associated with the role are inextricably intertwined, she added.

“I have to be really specific about how a person moves through the world and explore the different ways people differentiate themselves — how a person’s world view affects their physical relation to the space and other people around them. I needed to be as malleable as possible. Less bulked up and tough so much as flexible and adaptive. Versatile — you know what I mean? I needed to have all these colours in my palette, instead of just nerdy me with this limited physical vocabulary.”

Manson conceived the idea for Orphan Black alongside co-creator John Fawcett, a veteran director of Flashpoint and the filmed-in-New Zealand Spartacus epics for Starz. Manson supervises the series’ writing; Fawcett handles directing chores. Together, they feel they may have hit on something unique with Orphan Black — in part because of its timely, hot-wired concept, and in part because Maslany has immersed herself in her different roles, so much so that Manson said he can now spot which clone Maslany is playing simply by her body language.

Orphan Black was originally designed to be a feature film. Manson said he soon realized the story of a young woman rebooting her life as someone else was too complex to be told within the time constraints of a two-hour film. A series drama was the only solution.

Ten episodes are assured for Orphan Black’s first season. Whether there are more after that depends on ratings, and on CTV and BBC’s belief in the project.

“It’s a dream,” Maslany said. “I mean, it’s the greatest challenge I’ve ever faced as an actor. This is everything I’ve ever dreamt of. I’ve never conceived of playing a part like this. I could never have imagined that this would be something that I got to sink my teeth into.

“Sarah is a completely compelling, flawed human. Just on the page, brilliantly written. And then the other women are just as complex, just as challenging to play. They’re not the conventional women you see on the screen. That’s what I absolutely adore about this piece. They’re all funny, they’re all dark, they’re all flawed, they’re all selfish. They’re human. There’s not one who’s stereotypical. I really responded to that. Voice, dialect, accent, how education changes one’s vocal cadence — all that. It’s about who I am, and what makes me me. To do this, to differentiate all these women is a total dream.

National TV columnist for Postmedia News Network.
Two solitudes:
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There you have it, then. The trashier a program is, the more it’s like TV. Or, if you prefer, TV is a metaphor for the nations of the world, and Gilligan’s Island was really a message about why we don’t all get along.
That’s where I come in.
My first TV memory was of being menaced by a Dalek on Doctor Who — the original, scratchy, black-and-white Who.
My more recent TV memories include the Sopranos finale; 9/11; Elvis Costello’s first appearance (and temporary banishment) on Saturday Night Live; what was really inside the Erlenmeyer flask in The X-Files; Law & Order (the original, and those iconic chimes); glued to the set at 3am local time during the 2003 war in Iraq — TV’s first real-time war —and Bart Simpson scrawling on the chalkboard in The Simpsons’ opening credits: “I Must Not Write All Over the Walls.”
Other Bart-isms, as seen on that TV chalkboard over the years: “I Will Never Win an Emmy,” “I No Longer Want My MTV,” and, pointedly — if a little hopefully — “Network TV is Not Dead.”
I was there to witness "the new dawn of the sitcom" in the mid-1990s, followed — inevitably — by the glut of terrible sitcoms in the early naughts, a glut that led, directly and indirectly, to the rise of reality TV.
There’s been a lot to talk about — good, bad and indifferent — about TV over the years.
That’s where you, and this space, come in. Read on. Enjoy, feel free to agree, disagree and dispute whenever you want. TV may be ugly at times, but it's a mirror of democracy in action. A funhouse mirror at times, a sober reflection at others.View author's profile